


With Astrolabe and Carousel

by vargrimar



Series: The Chambers and the Valves [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Autistic Sherlock Holmes, Canon Compliant, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Introspection, Jealousy, M/M, Missing Scene, Pining, Post-Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 03, Sherlock Plays the Violin, the one where sherlock goes home after his best friend's wedding and broods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-22 12:43:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22849696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vargrimar/pseuds/vargrimar
Summary: It’s the heaviness. The weight. It’s the very ache of it compressed so tightly into one space that some nights he thinks he holds a collapsing star.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: The Chambers and the Valves [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640680
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	With Astrolabe and Carousel

**Author's Note:**

> ( and algebra  
> and symmetry  
> and none of this  
> was lost on me  
> and I could see  
> how still I’d been before . . . )

Sherlock understands now.

Of course, it’s a different sort of understanding. He still thinks the record should have been set straight centuries ago, but there’s nothing to be done about that now. What’s important is that he understands. He _understands_ why Aristotle attributed emotion to the heart and not the mind. He _understands_ why the symbolism took root in language and culture and withstood the test of time.

It’s the heaviness. The weight. It’s the very ache of it compressed so tightly into one space that some nights he thinks he holds a collapsing star.

(Sherlock has learnt: supernovas are dying stars. They expand, explode, expel their mass into the depths of space. If the star’s core is large enough, it compacts into a single point with virtually zero volume: a singularity.)

The feeling might rise and ebb, easing one day and tightening the next, but it is a vicious constant that happens without his consent and he cannot make it stop. It acts of its own accord, tethered in an inextricable way to someone who is not and never will be his. To have something physically nonexistent inflict such discomfort upon his body thrusts him out of control, and no matter how he tries to reclaim it, he finds that it is something that cannot be reclaimed.

That is why he is at Baker Street instead of John’s wedding reception. That is why he has escaped the cheery clamour of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. That is why he has foregone the best man’s duty to further mingle with the merry masses. His role of the day has already been played to perfection: he delivered his speech, protected John, protected Mary, protected Major James Sholto, and performed the piece he’d composed for the happy pair. The rest of the night is theirs to enjoy, and he won’t let the compacting singularity sinking in his chest affect their happiness.

And so Sherlock stands in 221B’s sitting room—his realm, his domain, his own unique microcosm, the space for him and him alone—violin held in the crook of his neck, sawing mournful notes into the terrible silence. He plays Mendelssohn and Brahms, Vitali and Bach, but not Paganini; too bright. He even plays Tchaikovsky and does so with vicious fervour. There is scarcely a moment’s rest between songs; he knows if his arm stops moving, if his hand freezes on the fingerboard, the flat’s harsh, bitter quiet will close in and swallow him whole, and so he delves from one dirge to the next without preamble or pause, throwing himself bodily into a performance for a man who will never hear.

He plays until sweat lacquers his brow. He plays until his shoulder aches. He plays until his fingers cramp. He plays until the soles of his feet feel bruised. He plays until he hears Mrs Hudson return from the reception, and even then he does not stop. Cannot stop. Exhaustion will claim him and drag him to the floorboards before he stops.

Because if his heart is to be his core, his singularity, then tonight will be his supernova. He will expel musical matter into the universe just as any other dying star. It seems only fitting as the stars seem to favour dramatic deaths and Sherlock has never been one to resist the dramatic. He will make melodies of his sufferings; he will not let the silence crush him.

Midnight comes and goes. The hum of traffic dwindles as London drifts into sleep. Streetlamps scorch pale halos beyond cool window glass, peering into the dark sitting room between the open curtains. The walls of Baker Street become well acquainted with melancholic vibratos and plaintive glissandos as Sherlock scrubs the wedding waltz from his strings.

He’s sure the notes have made their way upstairs, past the landing, gliding up the bannister toward the room John once occupied. A long while ago, he’d calculated the pressures and intensities that would enable John to hear his playing (nocturnes, lullabies, a soothing opus for the weary veteran), and he’s sure if John were here right now, he would make a fuss and tell him to practise his violin at some other time because—

 _It’s nearly three o’clock in the bloody morning! For God’s sake, Sherlock, why the hell are you doing this?_ The John from his mind palace glares from the landing, halfway through the threshold, an apparition long since faded. _Is this meant to be—I don’t know, some sort of statement? Acting out or something? Because this is on purpose. It is. You can’t tell me it isn’t. I_ know _you._

Of course you know me, he thinks, and plunges headfirst into another song.

The early hours creep in and entwine themselves between Sherlock’s fingers. Valleys insculp their way into his hardened calluses, rendering his prints white and red with the continuous presence of strings. He sways with the movement of the bow, back and forth, left to right, and revels in the soothing pleasure of continuous motion because if it weren’t for this, he’d be wandering the night in search of far worse things. He knows places, people; he’s got bolt-holes and contacts and he could disappear if he truly wished. With the proper solution, he could slip deep into a state where the ache in his chest wouldn’t feel quite so heavy, where all the racing thoughts would still. He might finally be granted relief and clarity he seeks, senses enshrouded by a palladium of his own choosing: control at last.

Is this what it’s like, then? he wonders, working the bow across the strings in a fit of pique. Is this what other people feel? He’s managed to shut it out for so long; he has kept himself at a constant distance throughout the years, content to force down the pointless emotional whims of the limbic system and to let them run their course, but it is clear now that he can no longer manage it. Not anymore. Not with John Watson.

And it had been so _easy_ before. It had been so very easy. Ignoring people, ignoring emotion. He’d hardly needed to think about it as it was second nature ( _alone protects me_ ) and he’d had neither the patience nor the interest in letting himself be persuaded otherwise.

And then John came, a single cell with life’s unsolved mysteries somehow meshed within his walls, and Sherlock’s immune system had all but collapsed at the exposure. That’s all it took: an offhanded _uh_ , _here_ , _use mine_ , and John squeezed through, circulating Sherlock’s networks of veins and arteries, an entirely different kind of lifeblood, and there he oxidised until his unassuming presence became a component, a complement, rather than an intrusive pathogen.

The anatomy of the heart introduced to the anatomy of the brain—perfect symmetry.

There had never been any hope for him, had there? Sherlock had been doomed right from the very start. From the moment John limped into the laboratory, stiff with a hand tremor and relying on his cane, it had only been a matter of time. He’d just been too blinded by his own bloody hubris to realise.

Eventually, his body finds the black leather of his chair. Sherlock reclines into the cushions, the violin still tucked under his chin as he saws out the final notes to yet another anguished tune. He shuts his eyes (it’s empty, _empty_ , the space where John’s chair once was, the space where _John_ once was), trying to immerse himself in the sensory input of a sore shoulder and stiff muscles and cramped fingers, but a diverted focus doesn’t lessen the ache that has been caged beside his lungs.

He plucks pizzicato and imagines John’s strong fingers picking at the tender cords sprouting from his heart, strumming and pulling as if it were an instrument in its own right, and he feels that concentrated heaviness like an anchor that roots him to the cushion, the chair, the floor, the very earth—and it _hurts_.

Aristotle must have experienced this exact thing centuries ago. All of those great philosophers and thinkers must have done. As wrong as the whole ‘emotion comes from the heart’ idea is, there must have been plenteous evidence amongst the scholars throughout the ages to even suggest it—a myriad of common symptoms (aching chests, quickened pulses, dilated pupils, stolen breaths) all attributed to one organ of note. It should be a comforting concept, he thinks, that geniuses of eras past must have also been victims to this very same affliction, and yet he finds no succour in the thought.

He cradles the violin in his lap, bow crossing his chest from hip to collarbone, his heart earthed in the delicate hollow just beneath. He can hear it beating amidst the flat’s stifling quiet. It’s an almost deafening sound, like the rhythmic drum of rushing feet on pavement or the skull-deep crack of gunfire or a storm burrowing down in the depths of his marrow. The ache seems to sharpen with every systolic shiver.

Sherlock knows the most apparent physiological manifestation of emotion is located in the heart. It’s a fairly obvious fact, one that is further evidenced by the various inaccurate intricacies of language concerning hearts over the centuries, but he hadn’t truly understood it before now. To read about something grants knowledge of it, certainly, but to experience it firsthand is more.

It’s a bit like getting shot, he supposes. One can read medical journals to know about what sort of damage a bullet can inflict upon the human body, and one can read the numerous accounts of soldiers to know about the emotional and physical turmoil that comes with such an injury, but there is no true preparation for the event itself. Total comprehension is beyond one’s scope without a similar incident for comparison.

And now it appears he has one. It’s as if someone has shoved in the last piece of evidence that would string all of the remaining fragments of a case together, and the result is sudden, violent, breathtaking, galvanising high voltage skipping through his nerves to the precarious point of overwhelm.

Sherlock raises the bow and drags it across the strings. The discordant sound pierces the stilled quiet and prickles the hairs down his nape. His fingers hurt and his muscles are sore and his neck burns with a particular kind of agony, but all of it is better than the collapsing star suffocating him from within.

Selfishly, he wishes epiphany had never come.


End file.
